This is a teaser of our Patreon-only interview with Yasha Levine, a journalist and

writer. It's very hard to talk about

international politics because you don't want to do it in a way that feeds into a narrative like if

we were talking about Putin in a vacuum or Assad in a vacuum or Saddam Hussein in a

vacuum it's one thing but it's so hard in the media when there's such

selective discussion and focus yeah yeah you know it's I mean it's funny

because the Soviet immigrant community is like I don't know I'd say it's it's

more anti- Putin than pro- Putin the most part.

There are people who like them but I'd say it's mostly

anti Putin just because a lot of people are just anti Russia or anti Soviet

anti the Soviet Union and so you know in Russia they see Russia as a kind of as an inheritor of the Soviet Union, and so people are generally not pro- Putin.

You know, and I don't know, I think immigrants, the Soviet immigrants who have to kind of justify why they left.

You know you want to see everything is the worst of the place that you came from here

justifies why you made such a huge change in your life.

I mean, you know, back with most Soviet people

were leaving, you didn't, you believe

that you were never gonna come back.

So there wasn't free flow of people between across the border.

You couldn't just come back and visit your family.

You lost your citizenship.

You were stripped of your citizenship and you were never going to come back.

And so, I mean, we came in the very late, you know, we left in the late 80s and of course everything collapsed a couple of years after that, so everything opened up.

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